
^^.SXL 



f^ 



^// 



'^5XL 




ADDEESS 



OF 



Hon, Thomas B, Reed, 



AT 



Grand Army Reunion, Old Orchard, 



Comrades of the Geand Akmy of the Republic : — As a 
tribute to your worth and to your services, this vast and splen- 
did audience, the largest on which my eye ever rested, surpasses 
any speeches we can possibly make. Free from all taint of 
ulterior purpose, spontaneous, natural as the tidal march of the 
ocean on the shore, it is a great throb of the popular heart beat- 
ing in recognition of you and of your deeds. And why should 
not this throng of human beings pour from every hill and val- 
ley ? They come to do honor to those noble qualities which 
have made human history in the past and human progress 
in the future possible. They are honoring their own better 



c:-<«n I 



:^^^<' 



natures, their own higher attributes. War is a terrible 
misfortune, but some of the rarest virtues of humanity are 
evolved out of that crucible, white with the blinding heat of 
passion. All men rise to honor self sacrifice, that noble quality 
which lifts us beyond our little personality and makes us part 
of the warp and woof of that race which has made the whole 
world blossom like the rose. All men rise to honor courage ; not 
that brute fearlessness, born of ignorance and of the flesh, but 
that nobler courage, born of the soul, which faces not only 
death, but the long and terrible marches, the fever of wounds, the 
depression of defeat, and all the frightful experiences of that 
weary road which led to the glorious citadel of liberty, over 
which floats to-day in the serene upper air the flag of a land 
that knows no slave again forever. When Frederick the Great 
led his mighty army to the conquest of Silesia, his battalions 
marched and fought and conquered by the vigor of a discipline 
which had gone on for a quarter of a century. When the troops 
of the German Empire set out for the campaign of Sadowa, a 
lifetime devoted to the exercises of war had made of them a 
machine fit to execute the will of despotic power. Not thus 
your march. Out of the midst of your fellow citizens you 
stepped. The sight of human blood had never filled your eyes. 
You went, not as machines, but as men, to execute your own 
will and the will of the people. And when your work was 
done, silently, like the subsidence of one of the great forces of 
nature, you took your places among your fellow men to help 
produce for them and yourselves the comforts and necessities of 
life. Upon no grander spectacle has human history ever looked ! 
What you have done and suffered has not gone without its rec- 
ompense. It is ordained . in the providence of God that good 
deeds contain the germ of their own reward. Another day than 
this has been consecrated to the memory of the dead ; this 
day is consecrated to the tender companionship and frater- 
nity of the living. What is the best good of life ? It is not 
high station, or high honors. My friend wlio sits there (Mr. 



N 



Blaine), who has had them all, will tell you that good fellow- 
^j ship of friends and hearty comradeship is better than all 

{j place and fame. To be interlaced one with another in thoughts 

and hopes and sympathies, is to become part and parcel of that 
eternal humanity which is so much greater and nobler than any 
of us poor atoms. Comrades, you have been welded together 
by the white heat of battle ! To have lived together, to have 
suffered togetiler, to have had great thoughts and to have done 
great deeds together, what solider foundation of friendship can 
there be on earth ? It must outlast all time, and if it be true 
that on the other shore we take up our characters and friend- 
ships where we leave them here, the great possibilities of re- 
ward in the future will transcend our highest hopes and our 
loftiest words. 




— ^ Stephen Berry, Printer, Portland, fc— 



£^ 013 787 341 2 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



111 II 



013 787 341 2 



Hollinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



